How To Get Rid Of Your Biggest Bottleneck – Insights Into Freedom Series, Part 8

Have you ever wondered why your business seems to slow down at a certain point and therefore does not give you the results you want? Do you know where your business bottlenecks are? Or, are YOU the bottleneck?

Here in the eighth video of my Insights Into Freedom series, I explain about a very powerful concept called the Theory of Constraints which I got from one of my readings. It states that the throughput of your business is limited to the speed of your biggest bottleneck.

I invite you to watch this video carefully as I explain how important it is to get rid of the bottlenecks in your life and business to be able to get the freedom you want. I’ve done this in my own business and it has tremendously increased my throughput.

Transcript Of Today’s Video

Welcome to another video in my Insights Into Freedom video series! My name is Gideon Shalwick.

Inside this series, I want to share with you some of the key insights I’ve had to help me get more freedom in my life.

This next one is still related to my work life, while i was working. It is a very, very powerful insight that has helped me tremendously in my business today and in the last few years. It’s all about the Theory of Constraints.

In the previous video, I talked about how this applies to task management, in getting projects done really quickly. But it also applies to many many other things.

A really amazing book that I recommend you read on this is from Eliyahu Goldratt. He wrote a book called “The Goal.” This is where he introduced this concept of the Theory of Constraints.

Now, that sounds like a mouthful. But really all it means is the management of your business (or anything for that matter) by looking at the bottlenecks within your business.

The idea here is that you look at your business as a system. You have something in front of the system that goes through your business and then something that comes out at the other end.

Throughout that process – it is called the throughput of your business… So you put money on the inside, at the front of your business. Whatever your business does through that money – it creates products or customers, or whatever else on the other end – that’s throughput for your business.

Perhaps, I’m not explaining myself very clear here. But any business has a throughput. And the key thing with your business is to try to increase that throughput. The only way you can do that is to systemize your business, look at how your business works as a system.

And then the next thing is absolutely key. It is to find the biggest bottleneck within that system. Why?… Well, the throughput of your business is limited to the speed of that bottleneck.

Say for example you’ve got three stages in a factory line: A, B and C. For example, this factory line is making a widget (whatever widget it is). Say the person working on Stage A can do 50 bits of the work that they have to do to make the widget. Stage B can only make 10. And Stage C can make a hundred; all during the same day.

Now the overall throughput of that system will only be as fast as the biggest bottleneck, which in this case is B, which will be 10. So it doesn’t matter how efficient and fast the other two stages are, the throughput of the business for that process is going to be limited to the biggest bottleneck in that process.

It is exactly the same for your business. You need to figure out what is biggest bottleneck in your business. Focus all your attention on that bottleneck; remove it; and then move on to the next biggest bottleneck.

As you do that, your business’ throughput increases and you make more money, get more customers, get more traffic or whatever it is.

Once again, the summary is that:

Create a system for your business. Analyze your business and draw it out in terms of a system. How does your system look from a system’s point of view?

Then look at what is the biggest bottleneck. Find ways to try to solve that bottleneck.

In my own personal business… I’m jumping the gun here a little bit, but I’ve been the bottleneck ’cause all the information had to flow through me. So the day that I changed that, the day that I hired a manager, I removed that bottleneck. Or at least, I eased that bottleneck. And the throughput of my business was able to increase a lot more.

I hope all that makes sense to you. It’s one of the most powerful insights that I’ve had. The credit is for Eliyahu Goldratt who’ve explained that so well to me in his book, “The Goal.” I really recommend you go ahead and read that.

Inside the next video, I’m going to share with you the financial freedom model, the professional model, so to speak. This is the model that I was pursuing at a time. It didn’t work out particularly well for me. A lot of people follow it, that’s fine. But as you’ll see, it is quite limited for the long term, in terms of your ultimate freedom.

Thank you so much for watching. I look forward to seeing you inside the next video.

About Gideon Shalwick

Gideon Shalwick is a YouTube and video marketing expert, and has figured out how to get a TON of attention using online video (with one YouTube channel reaching 10 million views!), and today, he's built a following of over 100,000 people for his business ventures, and 60,000+ people on this very blog, where he shares some of his most powerful video marketing strategies.

14 Responses to How To Get Rid Of Your Biggest Bottleneck – Insights Into Freedom Series, Part 8

TomBreezeTV

Great video Gideon, you’re right – systems are really important and looking at each stage is key. I look at 3 key stages constantly – traffic, sign ups and client conversion and then try and improve constantly.
I like the idea of removing yourself from the system as then your business can be more productive and also then you can take some time off from time to time!
Nice one Gideon and I hope you’re well.
Cheers,
Tom

Thanks for this video…
I took a TOC course back in 1995.
It was a 120 hours course and it made me realize I was the bottleneck of the company I worked in at that time…
TOC also includes techniques for conflict solving and more…
Anyway, thanks for the reminder… 😉

Hey Gids, I love being reminded of this concept, since we were discussing this in our recent podcast and the key component is to hire A team players who can run your business which allows you to step outside of the business – hence our conversation about outsourcing video editing, hiring your CEO, and your tech guy. To take it one step further, will you be stepping away from the creating the videos down the track and let someone else present?